I've finished the 1st game and about to start Deadfire. I'm asked to choose between the usual real time with pause or turn based. How does turn based play? What determines who goes first? Are there any "Action Points" that determine how much a character can move or attack, etc?

https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Turn-based_mode

Some basic knowledge about TB mode in Deadfire

If you liked PoE's RTwP combat and have no clear preference I would suggest you also pick RTwP for Deadfire. Just because the game and its encounters were designed around RTwP and not TB (which was added later with a big patch).
 

Edited March 11, 20205 yr by Boeroer

Sorry for hijacking, but one question for a complete new player (friend of mine played no poe 1):

Would you suggest TB? Or are some encounters broken, because there were designed around RTwP, as you  said. Builds in this forum are primary for RTwP?

Most of the builds, the theocrafting and mechanics discussions in this forum are about RTwP. Just because that's the mode Deadfire shipped with. 

I don't know enough about TB mode to be able to recommend/not recommend it. 

Edited May 22, 20205 yr by Boeroer

Awesome based! Reminds me, I've still yet to try a fully playthrough on TB myself….

Edited May 22, 20205 yr by Sven_

I'd go with RTwP for your first playthrough, particularly if you think it will be your only playthrough. The game was designed for RTwP, so the mechanics are at their most coherent in that mode. 

TB is the gaming equivalent of a student who runs their French essay through Google Translate. It sort of makes sense, but there are lots of oddities that make it obvious the student didn't spend enough time on the homework. Base stats in PoE aren't meant to have breakpoints, yet in TB they do. Action speed goes from being very important to near useless for non-casters. Most galling of all for me is that you can only take one action (other than moving) per round. Some actions are free, but other trivial actions aren't. It's quite annoying that if you switch weapon or drink a potion, you can't do anything else that round. The system would work better if you had multiple action points with different actions costing different numbers of points.

A lot of these TB issues would perhaps be less problematic if encounters had been rebalanced for the slower pace of combat. As it is, TB fights can take a really long time. I don't think TB is bad,  but it does feel like the devs weren't able to spend enough time working out the kinks.

Edited May 23, 20205 yr by Rooksx

as rooksx said.  TB takes a very long time in comparison.  Definitely RTwP for first play.

I have done full playthrough in TB. Overall, if you are fine with RTwP I would recommend going with that.

PoE system doesn’t translate fully into TB - it was designed and balanced around RTwP. dext. becomes far less beneficial, and balance between weapon types becomes skewed due to how they are implimented. Also making grazes almost guaranteed does significantly boost value of abilities that inflict statuses on grazes. 

However, if you much prefer TB it is playable. base game works fine, but combat encounters become excruciatingly long in the DLCs, as enemies got buffed and encounters got longer. Some fights get easier in TB - for example the spider megaBoss isn’t nearly as deadly, as bonus to Dex she gets isn’t nearly as beneficial. The only enemy I wasn’t able to beat in TB was the construct megabosses, as his meteor strike attack was happening all at once without an ability to move out or react. 

while there is no official way of switching between the two, I believe it is possible to switch between modes using console commands. Never tried it myself, but I remember reading it works just fine. 

Okay, this is very helpful. Thx to all.

I would suggest you stick with RTwP just because the game was designed that way.

If you prefer a turn-based RPG, you should take a look at another popular game like DO:2.

I think turn based is 100x better. I learned the mechanics of the game better in 5 hours playing turn based than I did 60 hours in RTwP.

Presumably one will have more "idle time" (or less stress) when playing TB mode over RTwP (unless you pause every second and check the log - which would be tedious as hell I guess) which might lead to a better understanding of the underlying mechanics. Maybe also because every single decision for action will be more important - so one will make extra sure it's effective which might motivate players to study the mechanics more thorougly. 

But those are somewhat different mechanics. Everything that's time-based (action speed, recovery time, durations, damage/healing over time etc.) is very different from the RTwP mode. And especially the action speed/recovery time mechanics of the RTwP modus are pretty obscurely implemented so it's extra hard to understand them properly. The TB mode makes that very easy because it's all organized in... well, turns.